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Jeremy Hilton

Editorial Notes

I’m goin’ down to the murky water because it is my homeAnd it feels like a broken arrow is buried deep beneath my bonesI will find the place from which I came the one that gave me breathAnd it will bring me shining joy even if it brings me death.

Suzie Ungerleider(The Bridge)

Editorial notes - It might seem that many of the poems and prose pieces in this issue are concerned with a sense of place, or possibly in some sense with ‘nature’, and there is a degree of truth In this. However, what really hangs most, if not all, these works together is something altogether more difficult to define, it may be seen as an absence. a silence, a darkness, ‘the blank .. screen of (the) soul’, to quote A.C.Evans. It may be seen as an underside, or a shadow-side, to our lives, it may perhaps pertain to night, or the moon, or death, or what remains unsaid. However it may be, or not be described, I believe it pervades the works chosen here. What is more, I believe that this quality is something close to what may be considered to distinguish real poetry from other writing and as such is a quality to be encouraged in our writing, especially as in much that passes for contemporary poetry it appears to be sadly lacking. So here, from some very young, inexperienced and unknown poets to a few of the best poets writing in the English language today, through all stages in between, are some works to be teasured and celebrated as an alternative poetry of our time.

Acknowledgements: Andrew Duncan’s poem On The Beach At Aberystwyth has previously appeared in Shearsman magazine.

Autumn Croquis by Elizabeth Howkins has been published in Taproot Literary Journal, U.S.A.

I am still trying to locate the author of three poems (Tender hooks, On ‘Love’, and (Given) Jealousy) which I intend to publish next year, if necessary anonymously. The only possibility seems to be a poet called Daniel North, but he has not responded to my attempts to contact him. If any readers recognise the poems, or know of Daniel North’s whereabouts, please let me know.